THE ERIE CANAL

On 4 July 1817 construction began on one of the most successful canals in history – the Erie Canal.  At that time, however, the so-called “Big Ditch” was considered a gamble on the part of the New York state government.  After its completion the Erie Canal would become the most successful canal in U.S. history, impacting not only the state of New York and New York City, but the northern half of the country from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River.

People have been building canals from more than four thousand years.  The earliest canals built by the Egyptians and Mesopotamians before 2000 B.C.E. were used primarily for irrigation.  The Sui Dynasty of China constructed one of the early canals for commerce, the Grand Canal c. 600 C.E.  More recently the Dutch, the French, and the English built canals before 1800.

The Erie Canal was built to link the Atlantic coastal plain with the trans-Appalachian Interior.  During the last quarter of the eighteenth century a number of national leaders, including George Washington, advocated such a transportation link across the Appalachians.  George Washington feared that without such a link the new American republic would splinter along the Appalachians.  The location of the Erie Canal is a function of the geography of the Appalachians.  The canal passes through the only significant break in these mountains along the length of this range.  As a result over a route of 363 miles the canal rises and falls a total vertical distance of only 688 feet.

The New York state government had to finance the Erie Canal because Presidents Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe would not support the U.S. government financing this project.  This refusal on the part of these three successive presidents grew out of concerns about Southern opposition to the U.S. government financing a canal in the north and ideological opposition to the U.S. government assuming the role of financing a sectional project without an explicit endorsement of such a role in the Constitution.

Construction was carried out by a number of companies that contracted for the completion of segments of the Canal.  These companies relied on both immigrants and U.S. citizens for construction, numbering more than ten thousand.

When the canal was completed in 1825, it connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie.  The New York state legislature selected Lake Erie rather than Lake Ontario as the western terminus because Canadians would have been able to use an “Ontario” Canal to their economic advantage, possibly to the detriment of New York, among other U.S., economic interests.  At the time of its completion this 363-mile long waterway was forty feet wide on the surface of the canal, tapering inward to a width of 28 feet at the bottom, which was only four feet below the surface.  Along the entire length of the original canal was a ten-foot wide towpath for horses and mules which pulled the canal traffic.

Shortly after completion of the original canal many realized that it was too small.  Two measures of this realization were the typical speed on the canal of 4 mph and the typical time required to travel the length of the canal of two weeks.  Enlargement began in 1836 and took 26 years.  When the first of two enlargements during the nineteenth century was finished, the canal had been widened from forty to seventy feet and deepened from four to seven feet.

The impact of the Erie Canal was evident before its completion.  Within four years of the start of construction part of the canal was being used.  By 1882 canal revenue from tolls totaled about $121 million, while construction and operating expenses from 1817 to 1882 were $38 million.  The Erie Canal contributed to New York City becoming the premier market city in the U.S. during the nineteenth century.  The canal also contributed to the growth of communities along the canal, including Schenectady, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.  In addition, the Canal inspired other state governments to gamble on canal construction, often less successfully than New York.

During the early twentieth century the canal became part of the New York state barge canal network.  The canal had been supplanted in part by the development of railroads, shortly after the development of the Erie Canal.  Ultimately surviving sections of the old canal have become part of the state’s recreational waterways.

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